


Elegy For The Damned

by Nejire



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Complicated Relationships, F/M, For Want of a Nail, Gen, M/M, Psychological Trauma, Quests Of Epic Proportions, Slow Burn, Uchiha Itachi Lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 20:24:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17230640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nejire/pseuds/Nejire
Summary: The light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. A Sasuke redemption story. Sort of.





	Elegy For The Damned

**Author's Note:**

> This is a repost! Actually... one of several reposts. The last repost, because I swear on my right pinky finger I'm not taking it down this time. Really.

Sasuke knows hatred down to its most vague idiosyncrasies, so when the back of his throat swells with sharp char he knows that he hates.

Later he learns that he was in a coma for two weeks. Some time in the midst he woke up just long enough for the systematic invalidation of half of his life, and then fell into an oscillation between uneasy sleep and incoherent dazes which lasted just over half that time. It is the beginning of January, and this is Akatsuki's secondary hideout, in Amegakure.

He is told all of this by a creature that calls itself Zetsu, made up of two parts which seem to think independently of another. The white half explains that they prefer to be referred to collectively. They are, according to him, "essentially one." The black half rebukes this quickly, asserting that the white half is the one that interacts with humans.

"I don't like to play with food."

White Zetsu reassures him that they only eat humans when Madara needs to dispose of bodies. "You are too useful to him to ever become our meal!"

Sasuke palms his sword, but does not act, allowing himself to be lulled by the hypnotic effects of White Zetsu's neat explanations. He receives a thoughtful and comprehensive summary of his health.

He also learns that Madara wishes to speak with him, and that he should remain easily locatable in the meanwhile.

"It's really important!"

This is where his suspicions begin. Deeming the risks to outweigh the consequences, he tells Zetsu he's going for a walk. He is met with protests, but in the end no action. Sasuke sticks to dark corners, sidles along the edges of hallways. Once, he narrowly misses a woman with blue hair. The next time, he is caught red-handed. The perpetrator has orange hair, and Rinnegan. He dismisses Sasuke with a cursory glance, the slight raising of an eyebrow, and instructions to return to wherever he came from until Madara returns. He clenches his teeth but remains still until he rounds the next corner. Pursuit would only be counterproductive.

For all of its grandiosity, Akatsuki's base has objectively predictable structure, so he has little trouble finding an exit. Exiting itself proves to be an issue. His fingers only have time to glance across the door before he feels a stiff hand clamp onto his shoulder.

"Have you become bored already... Sasuke?"

Sasuke wrenches his arm free, and then makes away as casually as he can fake. Though there is no world in which Madara cannot discern every minutiae of his every thought, he forces himself to resist the urge to rub the spot he has been touched.

"Zetsu said you weren't here," he grits out.

"And Zetsu did not lie," Madara agrees. "When it spoke with you, I was not." Madara does not walk, but glides toward Sasuke. Trying to stare at the mask to long makes anyone cross-eyed, whether this is because of a genjutsu or a sealing matrix, he has not been able to tell as of yet, but it is so close that Sasuke is able to see now that the swirling of the orange isn't induced by dizziness, but is a characteristic of the mask itself.

"I wonder—just why was it you decided to leave?" he says. "I wonder—what was it that was so important you could not wait, despite the fact I know you received orders from both Pain and Zetsu to  _stay put_?"

More like sugar-coated suggestions with prickling dangerous intent layered behind. They both know this, and so Sasuke sets his face in stone savagery.

"I'm not one of your puppets," he says. "Save the lecture for someone else and tell me what you want."

Madara hides his face, but his gaze burns. "You are reckless and impudent."

Sasuke feels a retort dance up the edge of his tongue, but Madara's next words send it pattering down.

"But I will indulge you. I don't want anything. Anything and everything I do stems from necessity, and works toward a goal far greater than myself." He pauses. "You, on the other hand Sasuke, you certainly want something. After all we spoke of, it is not unexpected."

There's a story, and it goes like this. There was a boy who was weapon, with two masters who refused to use him in unison. Dead, then dying, then hoping for death. He was a little toy soldier, with joints stiffened by coagulated blood, and the weeping souls of the dead clinging to his legs. "What is there to life," he asked, "but to be used?" And both of his masters laid before him their one agreement: nothing. Be the harbinger of righteousness in war, or of violence in peace, so long as you choose. Life is a paradox, weapon, little toy soldier, so pick your poison—

Itachi chose not to kill Sasuke.

Orochimaru's gilded birdcage ran on certain rhetoric. He, perhaps something he picked up from Sarutobi, was in the habit of quoting rhetoric to his subjects, though their contents greatly differed. He was fond of this one: pawns thrive on restrictions; remove them and they will only bring their downfall, and that of those around them.

Sasuke thinks he has come a little closer to understanding the logic of monsters.

Madara is a monster, too, but he has the means to destroy those who are far more evil than himself. He is willing to leave those means at Sasuke's disposal in exchange for his cooperation with Akatsuki. If these are the rules Madara wants their relationship to subsist by, Sasuke may just be willing to lend his temporary cooperation.

Because Konoha ordered his brother to fashion himself into a man of Akatsuki's ilk. They, knowing the delicate line of duty a clan heir must walk between his village and his people, asked him to choose. To have the capability to make others into monsters must be the quintessence of monstrosity. It is a line Akatsuki has not yet crossed.

So he replies, "I want a lot of things."

"Stay," Madara assures, "and you will accomplish all of them."

The words, "I'll stay," come almost too easily.

* * *

Madara tells Sasuke that it's nothing personal, but after the stunt he just pulled the trust between them has been drawn thin. He speaks as if there was any in the first place, but Sasuke is not inclined to correct him. He already had to put outside business on hold under the correct suspicion Sasuke would not last very long with Akatsuki. He does have other disreputable and shady business to accomplish, Sasuke must know that.

The solution to this, apparently, is to put Hoshigaki Kisame on indefinite babysitting duty. Even the consideration sends an uncomfortable worming sensation through Sasuke's gut, heats the blood in his veins.

"Kisame's devotion to Akatsuki and its cause has never wavered. There is no one better."

Sasuke had always operated under the assumption that Akatsuki partnerships were chosen at random, convenience and "your partner just died, take our newest member" and such other monotonies. But this man, with unwavering loyalty to Akatsuki—Suigetsu told Sasuke things, about the Blood Mist—this man is Itachi's antipode, and perhaps they are contrived. Fabricated for each to act as a check on the other.

"He doesn't have much competition anymore," Sasuke observes.

Madara does not deign to respond, instead snatching him by the sleeve and ducking down an obscure hallway. The grip is too callous not to be manufactured, and it occurs to Sasuke that the retaliation when his patience snapped could involve the revoking of Akatsuki's aid in his future plans that may or may not involve the annihilation of large numbers of cities and people. It would be prudent to offer at least some farce of a truce.

"What is this place, anyway?" Sasuke asks. Madara contemplates for a drawn out moment, but he assents, and grasps Sasuke's meager olive branch. The crunching of dead leaves, he thinks, is audible to both of them.

"The closest equivalent you have experience with is Hokage Tower," he replies. "This is where Hanzō the Salamander lived while he ruled, before Pain and Konan usurped him during the Third Shinobi World War."

Sasuke assumes that Pain is the man with the eyes, which makes Konan the blue-haired woman. They are compatriots, then. Academy did not talk much about international politics, the concern of the Hokage, only, but he was sure Hanzō the Salamander had never been usurped.

He cannot for the life of him come up with a reason Madara might want him to think of this as falsehood. So, he deduces, Pain and Konan must have actually done it, and then concealed it successfully from the rest of the world. It coincides with history well: Ame dropped out of the war with no explanation during a pivotal turning point.

"They aren't like the others."

"No, they're not," he concurs. "They know my goals, for they would not be satisfied with what I tell most. Akatsuki seeks to take over the world, and will use the Tailed Beasts as the ultimate iron fist. You do not know this, but to allow me freedom of movement, the other members of Akatsuki believe they are lead by Pain."

"Itachi was the one who told me who you were," Sasuke says. He swallows, and continues, "but he is."

Madara pauses, for a moment. "As an individual who often overstepped boundaries, Itachi was privy to many things he should not have been."

Madara, in turn, stuck his nose into many facets of Itachi's life in which he should not at all have been involved. Sasuke has toed the limits of audacity, but there is still the pervading question: how much of his clan's blood wets Madara's hands rather than Itachi's?

Sasuke grew up bathed in tales of this man. This is the one piece of Uchiha history the clan and the village never disputed. Madara, on his wretched descent into insanity, began falling victim to delusions and fits of paranoia. He became convinced that Konoha was conspiring against the clan, and tried to rally members up to strike back against the poisoning of citizens against the Uchiha. "It is not too late to leave," he said, "to start anew elsewhere, free of Senju sabotage."

The clan tolerated it, for a time, but the arrival of outside scrutiny lead to his permanent banishment. The better part of a century later, they are falsely blamed for the most devastating attack which has ever struck the village. For it, ostracized. And so they plot their retaliation.

Never do they suspect treason from their own prodigal son.

Madara did not make Itachi into a monster; he merely watched the fall. Had he succeeded in converting his kin, there would have been no precipice to jump.

* * *

Hoshigaki's steps are the firm sort that do not bother to hide themselves. I am a shinobi you should fear, they say, so come— in fact, I invite you. You won't live to regret it. He does not conceal his true, violent nature even in the smallest subtleties of the self.

"What a surprise," he says, but his voice has no inflection at all. "It's Uchiha Sasuke."

He has seen Hoshigaki in his life twice before. Both times, he wore a smile of rue and blood, and yet now he does not.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say that you missed Itachi."

A different sort of smile curves up, halfway, one which shadows the finer details of his teeth. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you have a death wish."

Sasuke's eyes metamorphose to Sharingan, and he raises his gaze until he stares into Hoshigaki's. He tries something which he has not done since the first time. Black tomoe bloom outward, the ne plus ultra quietus blossom. Itachi died for these eyes. It would be a waste not to put them to use.

Hoshigaki's eyes widen, and Sasuke feels his lips twitch. "You can try."

"It was my mistake," he intones, "to pick a fight with the one who bested Itachi." This registers, and Sasuke almost assumes it is sarcasm, then suspects it might be a compliment The inkling that neither of these are true flounders about, along with one which says Kisame is too straightforward to weave threads of meanings into his words.

And then Hoshigaki says, "I have a bottle of rice wine in my cloak."

He learns—these are the people his brother spent eight years in the company of.

He learns—rice wine is a startling flaxen, and it darts to and fro with a bit more weight to it than water. It also looks like piss. He tells this to Hoshigaki, who hmms, and clutches the bottle by the neck. There are no cups.

"It could be, next time," he taunts, content at Sasuke's sneer. He snatches the bottle. Raising an eyebrow, Hoshigaki leans back. It shifts Samehada from a lackadaisical tilt to ramrod straight down his back. "I can't decide," he says, "if that means that this is your first, or not."

Blurry memories streak by like stallions: clan ceremonies in which he puffed his chest with his head bowed and hands held in front of him; sneaking from Itachi's cup the single time Shisui had coaxed him from abstention during a festival; idiot Naruto spiking their drinks by accident, then beaming only weeks later as he pulled a bottle from his coat not-by-accident. Kakashi was late, and it was dark, and Sakura had threatened to beat him black and blue but then didn't, and it turned out she was a melancholic drunk. Kakashi hadn't ever shown his face, actually, but that didn't mean he hadn't seen, Ka-fucking-kashi and his quiet words about what made a team.

"It's not."

Hoshigaki watches. Sasuke drinks. It is rice wine—the one alcohol which he had never tried. It is more sickly sweet than poisoned honey. He tries to swallow, but the cloying rots in his throat and he gags and coughs until it touches the inside of his teeth and lips. It is leavened with the vomit flavor of his esophageal lining, but he forces it down again.

"You lied," Hoshigaki observes.

"I didn't lie," Sasuke snaps, and suddenly the bittersweet on his tongue has nothing to do with alcohol.

The room falls into contemplative silence. He pries the bottle from Sasuke's hand, eyeing him in what is unabashed scrutiny. He gathers words, and eventually, makes his thoughts known. "You aren't what I expected of Itachi's kid brother."

Of course he isn't. Itachi always seemed to engender preconceptions, whether he intended to or not. Remove the "whether" and the "or not", actually, because that he is a liar is a truism. But Sasuke doesn't say that. "You're exactly what I expected of his partner."

Minnows swim in Hoshigaki's stilted chuckle, a pool stained with rust and other reds.

Sasuke takes the bottle again, and isn't quite drunk when Hoshigaki decides to shed his Akatsuki cloak. "If there is one thing you should ever know about me, Uchiha Sasuke," he declares, "it's that I don't. Like. Liars. A lie and a secret are synonymous. And I just so happen to have a secret.

"It's about your brother."

In eight years, Itachi has been referred to as "brother" to his face twice

* * *

Sasuke breaks into a room which vaguely resembles the Hokage's office, sword in his hand and no qualms in his heart. Madara, Pain, and Konan are gathered by a desk, surrounding a map of Konoha. It is covered in dotted arrows of many colors, and notes are scrawled by pivotal defense points. Some of the marks—the red ones—denote points: the bridge by the genin training grounds, Ichiraku's Ramen, an apartment complex from the cheap part of the central district.

Sasuke looks away before Madara rolls it up.

"I thought you said you would control the boy," Pain remarks. He says this with all of the enthusiasm and animation of a zombie. From beside him, Konan tries to meet eyes. But to Madara, and so to Sasuke, there are only two people in the room.

"What is it that you think you know?"

"What is it that I think I know?" Sasuke parrots, and the diaphanous curtain falls.

"So you're going to pretend you didn't suss out why I was here the moment I walked in—fine then. If we're going to play games, then it's my turn to ask you a question." Sasuke's raises his head. "Why did you tell me my brother was dead?"

Konan or Pain or maybe Zetsu speak, but Sasuke only knows the cacophony of his own rage as the ember of the moment cracks, and weaves of spark trickle and melt into weepiness. His eyes belong to the dead, so Mangekyō shrieks and weeps corpse blood and wrenched from his eyes is fire.

Madara burns, the desk burns, the map burns. This room of monsters and their wretched schemes burns. It all burns. Writhes and screams and screams, screams. And all Sasuke can think is: this is a requiem. But Madara does not believe in repose for his dead, he stands in it all, above it all, and he snaps his finger and the black flames disappear into a vortex, all they have touched barely singed. And he looks at Sasuke, looks and Sasuke would like nothing more than to gouge his nails into those Sharingan eyes of his that he has never seen.

Madara rises from the ashes, and they cling to the hem of his cloak.

"That was foolish of you," he says. He speaks low, and oh so soft. Sasuke knows that soft anger is the most dangerous kind. It creeps. Like flames slowly licking away. Sasuke knew Orochimaru, knew Itachi. This was as they were, and in Madara's voice there is something redolent of Sound, men-children begging for mercy. Of police officers made prostrate in their own sanctum.

"Answer me!" Sasuke demands. "Why did you lie about Itachi? If he's truly alive, why should I believe anything you've told me?" He thrusts his sword into his belt, and steps forward. Bloody crescent moons etch themselves into the base of his palm. "Was he really under orders when he killed my clan?" Steps again. "Were they actually planning a coup d'état?" And again. "Was he really lying when he said you set the Nine-Tails—"

"Enough." Madara turns to Pain and Konan. "You leave tomorrow," he tells them with brusque intention, then grabs Sasuke by the wrist, squeezes until the bones jolt. "You, Sasuke, are coming with me."

They march from the room. As one would with a petulant child, Sasuke knows, and something scalds inside of him. Konan's gaze carves itself into Sasuke's back with a swift depth he does not think he will quite forget, ever. He glowers, and when Madara lets go, snatches his wrist back.

"It does not behoove someone such as you to throw what amounts to a temper-tantrum in front of my subordinates."

"You don't know anything about me."

Madara tilts his head. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. You are Sasuke of Uchiha. That alone says a lot."

Sasuke grits his teeth, and his head snaps up. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asks, and he anticipates Madara's answer. It takes him by the guts and squishes tight. Madara, Sasuke thinks, knows this, and that is why he does not give this to Sasuke, instead abruptly turns down another hallway with silent expectation. Presuming he will follow. As if he is a dog—the mere thought has his teeth grit with such strength the tips go powdery. But Sasuke recalls the quiet rage, and so Sasuke obliges.

"I'm taking you to your team," Madara says and for a second he feels this jolt of something, in the center of his sternum, and what comes to him are visions of pinks and yellows, oranges and reds, silver on ninja darks. "Shannaro!"s, "Dattebayo!"'s, "Sorry I'm late"s. He finds it hard to breathe. And then he realizes, and the something is gone, so fast he has no chance to even begin quashing it.

"They didn't leave," Sasuke says and not asks.

"You say that as if you expected they would."

Sasuke opens his mouth, and then closes it again. Madara says nothing else; neither does he, and they walk with Ame air and its coldness that numbs down to the bone, the tiny nests of heat so infrequent that they only occur just as he stops expecting. And this leads to Hebi, who take to this place as if it is molded for their forms.

They have a setup in a dead-end hallway, bedrolls spread out along the floor and supplies huddled in a corner. Karin and Suigetsu are playing a—charged, because Naruto would denounce the Hokage position before they ever interacted like even vaguely normal people—game of Senbon, of all things, while Jūgo has found respite crouched away with a scroll. He is writing, but Sasuke is unable to make out his scrawl: it is incredibly neat, but also miniscule.

Karin looks up first, and when she sees him her face becomes a piecemeal study in rapture. "Sasuke, you're awake!" She rushes to him, pressing her body to his, and then buries her face into his shoulder. He congeals under he touch, a statuesque figure up until her hands begin to wander. Then he pushes her away.

Her eyes rove. "Are you still not well?" she asks. "Your chakra feels very weak."

"Oi, leave him alone, Karin," Suigetsu drawls, shaking his hands loose. "Bastard just woke up from chakra vegetation."

Her head whips around, and in the moment she fingers the edge of her glasses. The hair that frames her lowering face is a mane of magenta rage. "Will you shut up, Suigetsu? Is it really that out of line that I'm showing concern for Sasuke?"

He snorts. "You know, I get the feeling that if it was Jūgo or me, you wouldn't be nearly so troubled. But then again," he puts his hands behind his neck, leaning back, "Sasuke's special, isn't he?"

"Maybe," Karin snarls, "if you weren't such an ass all the time—"

"Shut up."

Karin chokes on her next words to the symphonic backdrop of Suigetsu's painstaking eye-roll. "OK. Sorry, Sasuke."

"I'm glad you're unhurt," Jūgo tells him, and after that everybody does. Shut up, that is.

Sasuke stands tall, and turns to Madara. "Take me to my brother," he demands, but he does not. Instead he watches, lets the seconds sing, and vanishes from the room without another word. This is what Sasuke gets for believing the credence of the claims of a madman.

Suigetsu gets up, and rustles through the supplies until he comes out with a glass jar that has a hand pressed label. The characters make no sense next to each other, until he realizes he has been erroneously reading into the sloppiness of the strokes. It's supposed to say 'Metal Grease'. He settles down, pulling Kubikiribōchō from its strap-holster and beginning to polish it with his shirt.

He grins up at Sasuke, all teeth. "So what brings you here, esteemed leader? I get the feeling it's not for the pleasure of our company."

"Where's my brother?"

Suigetsu's breath hitches. "No idea." He covers it well, with a long-suffering sigh. "I just make the corpses. Getting rid of them's a whole other story." He gets back to his work, but goes goes rigid moments later under the pressure of Sasuke's relentless stare. "Wait…"

Karin and Jūgo play at pointed eye contact, dart hits dead center in the moment before flopping to the ground.

"... don't tell me you actually don't remember?" He steals a glance at the others. "Not it. Bearer of bad news duty's on one of you."

"I remember," Sasuke snaps.

"It doesn't matter, anyway," Karin adds, sounding just a tinge waspish. "Itachi's not dead."

She knows. Sasuke demands answers. And so she tells a story, and it begins like this. The man in the orange mask approaches her, as she worries over Sasuke's unconscious body. He wants to talk to her—in private, ostensibly, so she follows him to a room.

Itachi is in the room. Not dead. It is faint, and if she were anybody else she would call him dead, but she is not anybody else and so she can sense the weak flow. She questions, of course, because an hour before Madara had declared Sasuke the victor of a battle stemming years and going far beyond fists. He is alive, Madara says, but will not tell her why.

Then he asks her to heal him.

She says no, of course, because an hour before Madara had declared Sasuke the victor of a battle stemming years and going far beyond fists. She will not heal him, she tells Madara, unless the request comes from Sasuke's own lips. Karin expects him to push.

He doesn't. He claims to know another he could use, if she was firm in her refusal. She ponders this: if he has another healer, why come to her at all? He must have expected refusal. She is Hebi. She is with Sasuke. Karin is suspicious, but very firm. Very firm. And then she leaves, before he can change his mind.

Sasuke contemplates this.

"Take me there—where Madara took you," he commands.

* * *

Sasuke sees him, and knows it is him, if for nothing else than this: he struck him thrice during their battle, and he is bandaged in three places.

A swathe of cloth is taped under his chin to absorb blood, which drips reliably from the meeting of his lips. He is just as thin, just as pale and haggard as he was on that day. He still radiates the viscid warmth of illness at its denouement.

Itachi's hair is short now. Shorn to just above the ears, the way he has vague recollections of it being when they were small children. It ill becomes him, Sasuke decides. He looks at Itachi, looks and ruminates in his current state of being. It shouldn't be possible for this thing, this perfect incarnation of anything anyone could want in a successor for the Uchiha to have gone so wrong. Sasuke has always believed irony is a concept that is in itself a folly, but he thinks it is suited here.

Itachi is not dead. This could mean anything.

There is a bag, attached to a tube, attached to a needle, and it sticks from Itachi's arm.

He reaches over and yanks the needle from the fold of his skin. There is an alien sound as tape is ripped from skin, only the incised outline of x-shaped adhesive residue left behind. The tube slips from between his fingers. It swings back and forth, touches the floor teasingly. A pendulum. Perhaps when its momentum is arrested so too will be Itachi's life.

"Sasuke, what—" begins Karin. He cuts her off.

"Don't."

She looks almost ready to protest. Almost, and she doesn't.

* * *

Sasuke knows now: Madara is inscrutable. Karin rebukes him, so he turns to Orochimaru's other favored child. Kabuto's smile, he has long known, is a repugnant one, to the degree where memory has not conveyed it properly. He narrows his eyes, as Itachi's body tremors with the effect of lost sedatives.

"What are you doing here?" A man such as this can only be dealt with in spurious questioning.

"Me?" Kabuto plays at self-effacement. "I'm here as a favor for a friend. Mr. Uchiha Madara and I have been collaborating on a project for a while now, and he has mentioned the issues he's had in stabilizing your brother's health in passing. I have to admit, I was intrigued. It's not every day that one gets an opportunity to study somebody like Itachi."

Consider this: there should be little curiosity for Kabuto to ever find in Itachi, seeing as lies to them are what air is—being generous, water—to others.

"I'll let my brother die before I'll let you have a hand in his medical care."

His steps still ooze revolting conviction. Closer and closer, they get to the bedroll; closer and closer, Sasuke comes to ensuring he will never walk again. Chidori happens to be particularly effective, in that endeavor. "Last time we met," Kabuto observes, "you would have kissed Lord Orochimaru's feet before referring to Itachi as your brother. Things certainly have changed, haven't they, Sasuke?"

His jaw clenches. Kabuto disregards him and approaches the bed, and his hands are aglow with liquid life. "Besides, I've already been taking care of your brother for a while now. It would be senseless to lay me off at this point." Sasuke's fingers curl into the wall, and his nails carve their fury.

"You don't touch him."

Kabuto's lips twitch. He complies, steps back from Itachi to raise his hands high. "I haven't even checked his vitals yet, Sasuke," he says.

Sasuke scowls, shifts forward. "Tell me everything you do before you do it."

"If that's what you want," he assents. Sasuke's eyes do not leave him once in the next, tense ten minutes as he walks him through his medical processes. Eventually, he snaps on a pair of sterile gloves and begins fishing around in his mouth with a swab. Then he pulls out a small bag and seals it within.

"That's it for today," he announces. "Though I have a feeling I'll be seeing you around, Sasuke."

He smiles, again, and then he is gone. Sasuke anticipates Madara's appearance, but he soon realizes he should not. These are more of his games. Madara gets pleasure out of people knowing that they are in a game. He differs from Orochimaru this way. Orochimaru enjoyed telling people after, and leaving them with only hindsight for poor consolation. Sasuke cannot decide if it makes him more or less monstrous.

Sasuke used to wonder what kind of games Itachi preferred to play, to scream questions at the never-moved sky in moments of particular weakness.

Itachi can play games no longer, for his match has long been met. Madara has dressed the stage, and it will be a thespian affair worthy of the Daimyo's court. Itachi and he are alone. And the curtains part, and this is his play, a tale which begins and ends in inevitabilities:

There was something wrong, a strange, pulsing second heart which had punched through his own after Itachi's death, and it never left, its roots weaved tapestries through his ribs.

And it had never left, but it was leaving now. It wilts and shrivels and seeps back out his skin, snapping once more before evaporating under intense fluorescent light.

There is nobody else in the room. Sasuke knows one-hundred ways to kill a man with his hands.

You are still foolish, little brother.

It whispers in the muggy air, and then ghosts across the side of Sasuke's ear like a taunt. Chakra bursts forth into the tips of his fingers, to form an inane lightning jutsu which Chidori scorns. It cackles at the air.

And then dies.

Sweat-soaked, glassy like death Itachi is never the wiser for it.

"I hate you," he tells the body.

He falls asleep, eventually. The moon is full, and the sky is nearly cloudless. The drizzle so light it tiptoes across rooftops. There is a man, still as stagnant water, but—a finger twitches. Then a hand.

Itachi opens his eyes.

* * *

The forehead poke wasn't always a thing. They used to be like other brothers, hug and ruffle hair like other brothers—were they ever really like other brothers? But then it was, and Sasuke was five almost six and Itachi had just turned eleven.

Sasuke was tiptoeing from the closet, because he hadn't listened, he'd gone out to play Samurai versus Shinobi with his friends even though Mother had told him to do his homework first, and now he had to be just a little surreptitious to get it done. He crept through the house and cautiously pushed back the door to the room he and Itachi shared, then stole along the wall toward his bedroll.

But then he heard a thump, so he turned around. Itachi was shifting, restlessly. There was a crinkle right in the center of his nose, and his scars were both scrunched up tight. Sasuke couldn't help himself, he rushed right over and kneeled next to him, reaching his hand out and, and.

Itachi flashed like quicksilver, and Sasuke's eyes bursted with stars as his neck was ratcheted up and the back of his head smashed against the wall. His breaths were rapid, his eyes glazed over with foamy recollection. His pulse bludgeoned his wrist, Sasuke could feel it, but somehow, someway, he thought that for all it mattered he and Itachi might be a million miles apart. His own ratcheted up, and his breaths went desperately shallow through what thin passage for them remained.

"Brother?" he whispered.

Itachi's whine gurgled like acid in his throat. He pushed harder, adjusting his elbow so it angled at Sasuke's diaphragm. Sasuke whimpered.

"Brother, you're hurting me," he wailed. "Please let go."

There was a snap and his hyoid bone splintered, thin and weak like the fishes' Mother let him play with from her cutting board. Father and Mother plunged into the room just as Sasuke shrieked for all that his lungs were worth.

Father grabbed Itachi by the wrists and ripped him from Sasuke's body, slamming him against the opposite wall and clutching his shoulders. Sasuke's hands immediately went to his neck, and he swallowed air in great gulps, despite all the hurt that came with it.

"Itachi," Father ordered, "Itachi, cease this foolishness at once."

He did not listen, struggling and keening and flapping his hands wildly. Father began shaking him, and then Itachi moaned and his eyes went wet with a different sort of sheen, the kind that might drip down his cheeks and leave sticky tracks. Father abruptly loosened his grip, and then did something that Sasuke had never seen him do before, and would never see him do again. He pulled Itachi to himself, wrapped his arms around him. He—hugged Itachi.

"You are safe," he said. "Listen to me, you are safe."

He held him, and Itachi fluttered, a butterfly with its wings pinched between forefingers. Finally he went limp. He fell into Father, fell and Sasuke saw another first and only tonight, only but for a single other time and that might have been a dream: he watched Itachi cry. Mother was prying Sasuke's hands from his neck, fretting over the blooming bruises but Sasuke did not notice.

Itachi saw him. "My little brother... what?" He averted his eyes from Sasuke's face, and his cheeks tinged red. His gaze wandered and Sasuke knew by the sudden stab of breath just when his eyes laid on the ecchymoses caused by his own two hands. "I did that," he said and it read like a confession. His hands began to tremor. "I... hurt Sasuke?" he confirmed, and he met Mother and Father's eyes desperately and they did not say no.

He extracted himself from Father's grip. His whole body was trembling now, but his eyes did not leave his hands. Staring at them, like this: these must belong to an alien being. Then Itachi scrambled back, pressing himself to the wall and curling up tight. Mother scooped him up and hurried him from the room, and this was the last Sasuke saw that night.

Next morning, when Sasuke's neck was encased in a brace that made him want to rip it off and itch itch itch, Sasuke found Itachi and Father at the table, both nursing cold cups of tea. Somebody could have drawn a streak under both Itachi's eyes with a piece of charcoal, Sasuke thought, it was that dark.

"Forgive me, Sasuke," Itachi said. "I... lost myself."

Sasuke smiled, but no matter how hard he tried it was kind of flat, a little wan around the corners. Itachi noticed, of course. Itachi always noticed. "Silly Big Brother," he told him, in an awful, hoarse voice that shooed forgetting away, "there's nothing to forgive."

He crept forward and embraced Itachi. Itachi did not hug back. He was staring at his hands, again.

That was the last time they ever really touched, because after that, well—

after that, Itachi started poking him on the forehead.

* * *

Sasuke sits on the dock, the unzipped corpses of his sandals strewn recumbent beside him. His toe-tips skim the ocean, and gray seafoam clings until it is washed away by sharp cuts of inky water. It is raining. Akatsuki must have countless hideouts, and yet he ends up in the one with crummy weather, just as the infected dressing on top of the festering wound that is his life right now.

Madara perches beside him, painstakingly lowered so that he rests on his knees. "Do you regret defying me, now that you have seen the consequences?"

Sasuke stares resolutely down at the water.

"I find, often," he continues, "that I do not have to mete out punishment for insubordination. The insubordinate manages to punish himself. Tell me, Sasuke..." he trails off. "Do you regret visiting your brother?"

"What do you want?" Sasuke rejoins, and he can taste the razor-edge of satisfaction in the air. Madara needs to take a long walk off a short pier. Conveniently, Sasuke has one handy at the moment, and he has all intentions of informing Madara of exactly this fact, but then he starts talking, again.

"I would like your cooperation," Madara says, "But I will settle for a moment of your time. I am here to elaborate upon the logistics of your allegiance to my organization. It does entail more than just not returning to Konoha, you know."

"You lied to me," Sasuke points out. "Why should I listen to anything you say now?"

"I can't make you," Madara admits. Sasuke stiffens, and turns to glance at him. His head is bowed, elbows resting on his knees as he stares at the splashes of mashed berries that is what is left of a gone sunset, only faint stains of violet remaining. The yolk of the moon peeps out from the clouds, bathing the world in ethereal glow. "But Sasuke, I ask you this: why should I have told you? What has knowing done for you?"

His thoughts halt, from the largest mechanism to the smallest, single cog. And then, his fists clench and his eyes narrow and he glares at the moon. "You lied to me," is all he can think to say, but then, "I hate you."

"I know." Madara is smiling under that mask of his, definitely. He must take Sasuke's silence as permission to continue speaking. "You are a member of Akatsuki—correct me if I have not made this clear in the past." Sasuke's eyes widen, but. He does not. "As a member, there are things you must learn. My endgame, for one. World domination is a crude way to put it, as well as inherently fallacious. Subjugation, I believe would be a more accurate portrayal."

"They don't sound all that different to me," Sasuke says. The act of bringing something under control versus control itself. It is so subtle a difference as to be inconsequential, because, after all, why bother with subjugation if not to dominate after?

"It is different," Madara maintains, "because after I subjugate the people, they will become the ultimate ruler of their own realities."

"People are already the ruler of their own realities."

"So long as there are other people with their own realities infringing upon a person's, he can never be his own ruler. However..." Madara leans in incrementally closer to Sasuke, so that the mask is close enough it makes him dizzy. Sasuke finds he cannot move away. "If a person were to be the only true being in their own reality, if his subconscious were to dictate the actions of others, then he could live in eternal bliss."

Sasuke snorts. "That's only possible in dreams and genjutsu." He looks at Madara, looks, and he is still as he was before, has not moved, not even for a single gesture. And his eyelids find themselves pushed so far behind his eyes it aches as he realizes: "You want to put the whole world under genjutsu." Nothing can be funny in a cruel world, but Sasuke almost wants to laugh.

"You are... more astute than I have given you credit for in the past," Madara concedes. "Whether or not that is a good thing remains to be seen. Nonetheless, yes, that is my plan: to create a perfect world."

"The stories are right. You're crazy, old man," Sasuke says, kicking the water so it jets up in cruel, spiked sprays. His toes are beginning to stiffen, so he pulls them out, wipes them dry with the hem of his pants.

"In this world," Madara says, "sanity is only an inhibition."

Sasuke makes for his sandals, sliding his feet into them and positioning their stiff sides. "Whatever. If that's all you had to tell me, I'm going back in."

"There is a meeting, tomorrow at noon. Be there." The preternatural glow of night illuminates Madara's silhouette, and Sasuke wonders why perfection sits so heavy in his chest. Why it sits in his chest at all, for that matter.

* * *

He does not know how to feel about the first meeting. It is brief, and though it is Sasuke who made it so he knows it was Itachi's intention. For that he banishes all of the finer pieces of his thoughts which preach harebrained schemes—Naruto schemes, and that dead last hadn't changed a bit in three years but Sasuke didn't, doesn't, and never will care—like forgiveness and unconditional love.

Itachi is awake, and Itachi says, "I am not dead." Itachi sees Sasuke, and Itachi says, "Little brother, you are just as weak as the day I spared you."

And Sasuke feels screams boiling, being stirred inside of him, and his hands grasp at the edges of his pants, then dig into his legs. "End the games," he demands, and his voice is choked and his eyes sting and he glares at Itachi because this and everything is all his fault. "I know, I know everything you liar."

Itachi goes still, becomes still, the undiluted paragon of the word, just as with everything else he does.

"And don't be presumptuous," Sasuke bites out, "it wasn't my idea to keep you alive."

He does not speak, and his hair can't shadow his face now that it is too short to be pulled back.

"Well," Sasuke prods, "do you have anything to say for yourself, Itachi?"

Itachi uses his hands to lever himself up on his bedroll, glances at the dangling needle and tube to his side. His head turns, and he gazes out the window. He sees what is always there: rain and tall metal spiles dripping with people. "Madara has told you a story, but you clearly still know nothing at all."

And something, a thin shaking hold onto himself, it snaps without abandon. "I know nothing?" he seethes. "I saw the dead bodies of our clanmates strewn inside their own homes. I sobbed over our parents'." He clenches his fists around his so fingers with such intensity they pop in their sockets. "I watched for seventy-two hours as you killed them over and over again, and then had to do it again five years later after you broke my wrist and tortured Kakashi into a coma."

He throws what remains of restraint to the wind, and it slips away with more ease than it should, to the narrow horizon and then—then it's gone. "You betrayed our people for the village. I know that. So tell me, what do I still have to learn? Because I'd love to hear it!"

Silence.

Itachi can say nothing, though his eyes glint with the hardness of uncut diamond, and Sasuke wants a barb that will rip into his skin and tear, make blood and leave shavings of bone, so he says, as he walks out the door. "If you weren't so weak, you would have killed me like you were supposed to."

* * *

There is a meeting at noon, and Sasuke attends it. There are people at the meeting: Zetsu, Konan. And then Jūgo and Karin—they wear the cloaks with the clouds. They are Akatsuki too, now. Madara holds another, and when Sasuke approaches, hands it to him without ceremony. There is a table at his knees, and the table has rings. It is not the cloaks that make Akatsuki, those are only markers for the rest of the world.

Hoshigaki comes in, and Suigetsu trails behind him. He is a despondent shade, arms belayed with new scrapes, Kubikiribōchō scratched and dulled. Samehada curls in delight, purring and rumbling, the accompanying tenor to the soprano of Ame's screech-bats, which linger throughout. Always looking for hurdles he's not tall enough to jump, but then, Sasuke doesn't have much room to be talking.

"Well, well," Hoshigaki drawls. "If it isn't the little endangered species squad, all together again."

Karin steps forward, fingering her glasses with short, jerky movements. "The endangered species squad? Why you— just what kind of person are you to be saying things like that?"

Kisame's lips curve up into a disturbing sort of half-smile. "A Hōzuki, an Uzumaki, and whatever in the world you are, Mr. Two-Face—" Jūgo's eyes do not leave the floor, and Suigetsu seems to come to himself just enough to flip a middle finger in his direction. "—led by an Uchiha. All four of your little family names have dwindled to practically nothing. It really is fitting. And as to what sort of person I am— well, I suppose you could say that I'm not a person at all, but a monster."

"Eh— huh?" is all Karin is able to manage. Hoshigaki nods, as if satisfied at this, and turns to Madara, who at his attention begins speaking.

"As of late, we have lost much of our dedicated membership," he announces. "But now, we have four more for our cause. Sasuke, Suigetsu, Karin, Jūgo, we welcome you to Akatsuki."

Suigetsu grins, Karin scowls, and Jūgo stills, impassive. Sasuke just is.

"Come forward," Madara says, and once they comply Sasuke does, too. They stand before the table now, and at Madara's indication, kneel.

"Sasuke, you were formerly of Konoha. Suigetsu, you were formerly of Kiri. Karin, you were formerly of Kusa." Sasuke glances at her, and realizes he had never thought to ask after her origins. "And Jūgo, you had no affiliations at all but for your people, now extinct. You may sit and observe, as this will not apply to you." He turns back to them.

"Lay your forehead protectors on the table," he orders. Karin and Suigetsu comply immediately. Sasuke's hand hovers over the fold of his pant leg, where his lays hidden under layers of bandage. _I bet you won't be able to leave a single scratch on my forehead._ It is Madara's stoney gaze which jolts him from his reverie, and he rips it from the bandages and slams it down. This gains him side-eyes, and another one of Madara's hidden smiles.

The leaf is already scratched.

"It was Naruto," is all he gives by way of explanation, because really, for anyone who's been around Naruto for more than five seconds that should be plenty a clarification, and Madara tells him he must make his own line over it. So he pulls out a kunai, and—he does. Three horrible screeches simultaneously strike the air. And it is done. Madara comes before each of them in turn, takes them by the chin until a shiver darts down their spines. And then he ties their protector around their heads and pronounces them loyal.

"As members," he says. "You will receive rings which aid you in your duties." He gestures to the four which lay before them, each a different color, each bearing a different word: a pearl which says "three", a sky which says "north", a green which says, redundantly, "green", and a scarlet which says, in equal measure, "scarlet".

"Take one," he instructs, and Karin and Suigetsu dive for three and green, respectively. Sasuke plucks up scarlet, and Jūgo reaches cautiously for north. "Interesting choices," he says, but has eyes only for Sasuke. "Karin's goes on her left index finger; Jūgo's on left middle; Suigetsu's on right index..." he pauses longer than strictly necessary, "And Sasuke's on right ring."

When Sasuke complies, a shock goes through his chakra system, and the ring, which he had previously had to force on with some difficulty, molds to each contour of his finger. It gleams in the room's dim light.

"Welcome," Madara murmurs, and Kisame, Zetsu—or the white one, at least, and Hoshigaki follow suit. Then he waves them up and turns away, his cloak billowing out behind him like an introduction. "Konan has some unfortunate news to share with us."

Konan's eyes are shadowed, her painted lips pursed. "Pain perished during our latest attempt to capture the Kyūbi Jinchūriki," she tells them.

"And this," Madara affirms, "coupled with Itachi's unfortunate demise before he and Kisame could capture the Hachibi Jinchūriki means that there is still much work to be done if Akatsuki's goals are to be accomplished. And so with that in mind, new partnerships must be made. I have decided this: Karin and Kisame, Suigetsu and Konan, Jūgo and Zetsu. You, Sasuke, will be my partner."

Sasuke shorts a growl, and watches the others' varying degrees of un-excitement. He breathes in, then out, and recalls Madara's vow to aid him in his getting revenge. To burn what needs to be to mere whispers of a char. So he says nothing, and Madara continues. "Konan, you will reattempt the Kyūbi with Suigetsu by your side, and Karin, you are assigned to the Hachibi, and will have Kisame to help you. We will reconvene in a week, via apparitions."

And then everybody begins to leave, but Sasuke snaps, "Wait," and so they do.

"Yes, Sasuke?" Madara lilts, and Sasuke's head whips toward him.

"What about us?"

"We are interrupting the Five-Kage Summit," he says, and he tilts his head. Sasuke steps forward, then steps again.

"Because you don't trust me."

Madara denies nothing. "Do you blame me, knowing what I know about you?"

"You know nothing," Sasuke snaps, glowering.

"Is it maybe, Sasuke, that you would like me to give you a chance to prove yourself?" Madara queries, sing-song-y, and if he raised the pitch just a little it would be Tobi's. Madara grows, looming over with the casual conceit an adult uses with a five-year-old.

"I don't need to prove myself to you," he growls, and turns away.

"What a shame. I guess that just means you and I aren't going to capture the Kyūbi together, Sasuke. That's really too bad, but if you want to go to Five-Kage Summit with me and sit on the sidelines, I guess that's fine, too." He is Tobi now, pitch and gratuitous gesticulations and all. He wags his finger at Sasuke in a "come hither" motion. "And to think that all you had to do was admit to me that you wanted my trust." He shrugs. "Your loss."

Sasuke hates the world. "I..."

"You...?" Tobi prompts.

In the rock of Sasuke's face there erupts blustering cracks of lava. "I want a chance to prove myself," he grits out.

"Oh, do you now?" asks Tobi, and—the nerve—he actually leans down and puts his hands on his knees. "Well, I don't know. You seemed awfully reluctant. I wouldn't want to pressure you into doing something you might regret later on. It's really okay if you don't, I'll just send Kona—"

"I want to," he reiterates.

"Well, I suppose if you're really sure..." Tobi waltzes over and wraps a hand around his shoulder, turning to the others. "What do you think guys? Should Sasuke and I go and capture the Kyūbi?"

The silence smothers.

Suigetsu coughs several times, quick hacks. "I mean... yeah, sure... why not?" There are general nods of assent, and a baring of teeth that might be a smile from Hoshigaki.

"Would you look at that! I guess we're going to capture the Kyūbi. Oh, isn't this just wonderful?" Tobi cries, and he walks over and wraps one arm around Sasuke, the other thrown up, and Sasuke's skin tingles. "We're going to have so much fun together!"

* * *

Sasuke goes back.

When he does, Itachi has his eyes closed, his hands pressed in a crest over his heart. He lays over the thin sheet, pressed neatly beneath, and his head tilts back just so over the edge of the bedroll. His skin is pallid with ash, and makes the tattoo on his upper-arm pop out a lurid neon. Sasuke kneels by Itachi's bedroll, ghosts his thumb over its outermost curvature. He opens his eyes. He otherwise makes no protest.

"They branded you," he says, and there is a murmur in the back of his mind that says, the Uchiha never did that, with the Uchiha all a person had to do was take their shirt off to rid themselves of the legacy.

"It is regulation for ANBU," Itachi reminds, and then, "No shinobi of Konoha is ever obligated to join that division." And Sasuke wonders if he really is so opaque, or maybe, it's just that Itachi has always been able to see through his outer armor in the same way Sasuke has never see through his. His thumb reaches around his forefinger, squeezes, and his thumbtip scratches along the tattoo's surface. Red dips, then pales.

"Like a cattle. They branded you and then herded you like a cattle."

Itachi's gaze stilts. "I am not livestock. I am Konoha's tool, and I offered myself before her willingly. A cattle's lot is a result of unlucky birth."

"But you were born unlucky," Sasuke retorts. "You were born Uchiha."

He turns his head away, carefully lifting Sasuke's hand from his arm and laying it across the side of the bedroll. Mouth pressed in a thin line, muscles gone taut. "You are still foolish. You are as foolish as Kisame."

Itachi's eyes do not widen, nor does he flinch back as Sasuke slaps him. The sting reverberates in his palm.

"At least I'm not foolish enough to let myself be used," Sasuke says.

"What do you call what Madara is doing with you, then?" Itachi queries, in a hushed voice that makes him want to scream, or maybe just hit him again. Instead, he fishes around the supplies spread across the floor, medical supplies, all, and comes back with a cloth and a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

Sasuke will not respond, and once Itachi realizes this, he takes opportunity. "I am and always will be Konoha's Uchiha Itachi," he maintains, trapping Sasuke in a moment of intense eye contact.

He unscrews the lid, sending it flying toward the opposite end of the room, before replacing it with the cloth and swiftly upturning the bottle. Once he feels the wetness seep through to the pads of his fingers, he rights it. "But you're my brother first," he mocks, thrown out on a whim based on the words of a man in a cave.

Itachi bows his head.

"Look at me," Sasuke orders, jabbing at his cheek with the cloth. There is a thin line of blood, where the jagged edges of his nails caught.

He complies. Meekly, he might have said, but he knows better than that. See his face, see the dilation of the pupils in a bright room, see the coating milky film. "Your eyes have almost finished sealing themselves off." It's not a question. "You can't even see shapes anymore, can you, just light?"

"You are correct."

The cloth with the rubbing alcohol sharply veers toward Itachi's arm, skims the ANBU tattoo until it gleams with a veneer of chemical residue. He sets it aside, but his hand returns, hovering just over.

"This gesture will be lost on you, then," Sasuke says.

His palm alights with flame, and without a moment of hesitation it descends, descends, descends, until the rot of burning human flesh permeates the whole air. "Foolish," Itachi whispers, and makes not another sound.

Later: Sasuke pauses at the doorway, instinctively muffling his chakra signature, though the gesture will be lost if Karin is paying attention. She isn't.

"He isn't this way usually, you know," she is saying, slathering putrid green essence over the festering burn. It will scar. "Cruel like this."

Itachi smiles, and it is the same smile he gave at what he thought were his last words and it makes Sasuke want to look away and never look again, it makes him wish just a little that they were, actually, his last words. "I know," he says. "Much time has passed, but he has changed little." He swallows. "I still bring out only the worst in him."

Karin's hands slacken, and she averts her eyes.

"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, you do."

Sasuke does not stay.


End file.
